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June 29, 2004

Yesterday was a disaster

I work for a company that goes into different businesses and does a complete inventory of all merchandise. Yesterday my count was so off that they asked me to leave the inventory. I didn't get written up ....but I was mortified and cried for the better part of the evening. The was one ray of sunshine. Usually I punish myself by not letting myself eat for the rest of the day. This time I didn't do that but when I got hungry I allowed myself to eat. So I guess it's two steps backwards and one forward.

Posted by Kathy at 07:58 AM | Comments (0)

June 27, 2004

Presently having a difficult time with eating...

This past winter I had gained enough weight that I fell into the normal category. But it began bothering me. My stomach was bloated and stuck out. My clothes didn't fit. I bought a few pairs of pants up one size but that did not help....I felt fat. At the suggestion of my T I started doing some Pilates style exercising programs on video tape. Within 2 weeks I noticed a difference. My stomach was flatter...a major biggie with me. I had more energy and my posture improved. But soon I began eliminating certain foods from my diet that could be causing me to keep up my current weight. I bought another exercise video and soon I was doing one in the morning and one in the afternoon. That wouldn't have been a bad thing if I had been able to keep it at that but I didn't. Soon I was playing the videos at all times of the day. Especially after I ate something. What had started as a good thing was going wrong. I became obsessive about it. Within a month I had lost all of the weight I had gained.

Soon, eating itself became difficult...and not eating became easier. I quickly went back to my old ways and am now counting every calorie. From what my T tells me anorexia most certainly has an OCD element about it and I have to agree with her. I am tired and feel wiped out for much of the day. I don't sleep well at night in spite of the meds I take. So back to work on the anorexia issue.

I have new found hope this time as I'm working with someone who has experienced an eating disorder in her own life. She has successfully put it in her past and is now free of it.

In my last session we did things a bit differently. Instead of me rambling on forever she did some word association things. I think it is starting to point to something but at this point I am not sure what. I do know this.... I do want to be well and want to put anorexia in my past. The upcoming days may be a struggling but I am still hoping for recovery. I know it won't happen overnight, but I do believe it's possible.

Posted by Kathy at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)

June 17, 2004

A Piece Of Carrot Cake...

I am currently working on this with the help of my T. I recently went to a church barbecue. Food and lots of it! I did fine until it came to the desserts. There is front of me was the most delicious looking carrot cake. I just had to have a piece. I scraped away some extra frosting and slowly ate it trying to enjoy each morsel. Then came the onslaught of feelings. I felt guilty and my capris suddenly felt much tighter. Next, worry and panic set in . I have never been one to purge but I wanted this food out of me now! I was in a panic because there was no fast way out. Then I thought to myself that it will be a long time before I can eat again. I suddenly felt so very tired of this vicious cycle of negative feelings. I wished that it would just end...my life that is. I wasn't suicidal nor did I plan to take any action on my feelings but it just was such a lousy feeling to be back at this same old place...a trap after 35 years! Minutes then hours passed. I talked with other people at the barbecue, finally went home and spent some time on the phone with a relative who I did not share any of my feelings with. I finally became tired and went to bed for the night.

It's my hope that I can discover more of what's going on inside me as I write more. This post feels like it's incomplete....like I felt and though things but didn't notice them. As the time passes I'm going to try to take more notice of what things feel like and look like in me. I want to get better than I am!

Posted by Kathy at 04:03 PM | Comments (0)

Ritualistic Eating

Early on in my struggle with anorexia I ate in a very rigid manner. I would not go to other people’s houses for dinner nor would I go out to a restaurant. This was mainly because my food had to be below a certain caloric level, I had to weigh or measure everything I ate and then I had to burn it all off by obsessive exercise. I also felt that I had to eat the same foods…in them was comfort and the reassurance that I would not get fat.
Being this way really hampered my social life and my relationship with the rest of my family. I was always trying to find a way out of appearing at family celebrations that involved food. This eventually had a disastrous affect on my marriage. After 5 years of marriage my husband finally had enough of my weird ways and he walked out of my life. My marriage ended in divorce.
Still I could not break free of the pattern I had set up for myself. I became very depressed over this whole issue. It was embarrassing to have to measure or weight everything I ate. I felt like I was in the grip of an icy cold machine that wouldn’t allow me any freedom. I used to dream of what my life would be like if only I had not become a victim to anorexia.
I am still working on these issues with the help of a therapist who had an eating disorder herself that she successfully conquered in her own life.

Posted by Kathy at 03:58 PM | Comments (0)

June 03, 2004

The Role Of Body Dysmorphic Disorder In Anorexia

“Body Dysmorphic Disorder occurs in people who are normal-looking. However, they are overly concerned with a small defect in their appearance, or they are preoccupied with an imagined defect in their appearance. In order to qualify for this diagnosis, this preoccupation must affect their lives in at least one situation, be it work, leisure or marriage, or cause significant distress. Oftentimes, those with this disorder may go so far as to have plastic surgery.”
I cannot believe the many times I looked in the mirror and saw fat when the scale said very much under weight. I think that this is a stronghold that drags many people with ana even deeper into the illness. No matter what people said if I found any visible amount of flesh it appeared as fat to me. I also believed I was a very large person. Eventually I found a way to counteract the lies that my eyes and mind told me. I would take a pair of my size 4 or 6 jeans, button & zip them, then spread them out on the floor. I would look at them and I could tell from their size that no overweight or large person could possibly fit into those pants. Just doing that simple thing helped me past a certain milestone in my determination to overcome anorexia.
The link below has some very good information on Body Dysmorphic Disorder:
http://www.healthyplace.com/Communities/Eating_Disorders/peacelovehope/bdd.html
I hope that this small idea may help someone else out.

Posted by Kathy at 04:27 PM | Comments (0)

June 02, 2004

Anorexia & Pregnancy

In spite of having ana I conceived and gave birth to four babies. One was with my first husband and three were with my second husband. As one might be able to imagine gaining weight during my pregnancy was very difficult. I lacked coping skills, professional help and maturity in my first three pregnancies. All of my kid’s birth weight was right around six pounds. I usually gained around 12 pounds with each pregnancy and I managed to keep that off my weight after the pregnancy. I was hungry most of the time, which led to much frustration. I will back up and slow down to tell some more of this area of my life.

I was 20 when I conceived my first-born. I had little knowledge about pregnancy so I bought a few good books and read them from cover to cover. I didn’t particularly like my OB doctor but I also didn’t go looking for a different one either. So I went through the pregnancy feeling pretty much overwhelmed at what was happening to my life, my body, and me. I can remember being very hungry but only eating a little. I abused laxatives during most of the pregnancy and I worried constantly that somehow this would damage the baby. I gained a total of 12 pounds during the pregnancy and my baby weighed 5 pounds 15 ounces. I went full term with him and gave birth to a healthy baby boy while in my ninth month of pregnancy.

The thing I remember the most was fear. Fear I would gain a huge amount of weight. Fear my baby wouldn’t be normal. Fear of taking care of a newborn baby. Fear at what changes would take place in my marriage. Within a few months these fears manifested themselves in the form of depression. I became severely depressed. The baby was always crying and spewing up most of his formula. My husband became very distant to me. I felt like I was bottoming out and that I could no longer cope. Even my usual forced exercise…getting thin again…that didn’t help a bit. I finally was put on anti-depressants, which was a great help. Within a few months I gained some weight back, my marriage normalized itself and life began feeling like I could cope with it. My baby became more content and I enjoyed being a mother more also.

For the sake of this entry I will skip on ahead to how I coped or didn’t cope with the pregnancies of my other three children from my second marriage. My daughter, Lisa, was our first child together. We had wanted children and I was in a relatively calm period in my life so conception was fairly easy. I conceived the first month we tried to have a baby. Again eating enough was a problem. There was no one to talk to about it so I just went along on my own. I went full term on this baby and gained about the same amount of weight as my first pregnancy. It just seemed to me that there should have been some kind of help out there for me. But part of me was afraid to look…afraid of help. So I went through the pregnancy as well as possible. I did manage to lessen my use of laxatives and the food that I did eat was a lot healthier than that of my first pregnancy.

As I neared the end of my ninth month this baby showed no sign of making it’s way into this world. My due date came and went. Meanwhile my OB doc did some tests on my due to the little amount of weight I had gained. He found out that my placenta was not a healthy place for my baby to be in anymore so labor was induced. I gave birth to a 5 pound 15 ounce girl who rated 10 on the Apgar score. We were elated! My husband was thrilled and so was I!!!

After about a month I once again began going into post partum depression. This time I recognized it for what it was and I was able to get help much more quickly than with my first child. I quickly returned to the weight I was before getting pregnant with this little one. She was a quiet content baby….or so we thought. Unfortunately by the time she was two years old we knew that all was not well with her. She was late in all of her development and something just wasn’t quite right. By the time she was 30 months old there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Lisa was developmentally disabled. She went through a series of tests only to find out that our worst fears were true. Our daughter, my only daughter, was not normal.

I blamed myself, the lack of care I gave myself during the pregnancy. It was an awful time in my life. I felt just devastated and it has been something I have had to live with all of my life. We will never know if ana caused my daughter to be mentally handicapped. She presently resides in a group home which she likes very much. She is well cared for, clean and appears quite happy. I, on the other hand, will never know if my being anarectic caused her to be mentally handicapped.

A year later I became pregnant with our second child. The usual fears rushed in. Fear that I would return to being overweight, fear that I was not giving my unborn child healthy conditions while I was carrying him. An unrealistic fear on my part that I would always stat the way I was. If one looked at me from the front they would never guess I was pregnant. If I turned side ways I looked like the side of a barn I was so huge.

Again labor had to be induced and within four hours I was the proud parent of a lovely baby boy. My husband was so thrilled he practically jumped through the ceiling of the hospital. Within a week after delivery I was pencil thin again. Shortly thereafter my husband lost his job and he was in a complete rage over the situation. I had never send him like that before. The yelling and screaming he did went on for days, which eventually stretched into weeks then months.

I once again noticed the signs of postpartum depression but because we had no medical insurance I didn’t think I could go for help. I grew increasingly depressed…desperately depressed. My weight went for 100 lbs down to 75 lbs. I was dangerously thin and I knew it. Things finally got so bad that in order to save my life I went to see a doctor. His prognosis was very poor. My heart rate and all other physiological symptoms spiraled downward. I finally arrived at the point that I needed medical intervention to stay alive. I submitted to going inpatient at a medical ward and allowed myself to become tube fed for a while. After a while I had gained enough weight and strength to come home. It took me many months to gain back the weight that I had lost. But I did manage to do so.

My final pregnancy went quite differently than the first three. This time I had scheduled counseling appointments during the nine months I was pregnant. I talked of my fears of staying at the weight and size I was. I talked about my fear of eating and gaining more weight. Going for counseling during that last pregnancy was the best thing I could have done for my unborn baby and myself. This time I gained a little over 20 pounds. Labor started of its own and I gave birth to a son on the very day I was due.

This time there was no post partook depression. I had to continue to eat well as I was nursing this child. This one pregnancy and my child afterwards was a tremendously great high point in my life. I truly believe that my success lay in the fact that I attended counseling during the entire pregnancy.

To any future mothers to be I hope you will give careful consideration to receiving counseling during your pregnancy. It made a huge difference!!!

Posted by Kathy at 03:15 AM | Comments (0)